I should start with this is a personal, not for profit, will never be for profit project and will never be sold in any form, although it may be shared with fellow X-10 Home Automation hobbyists such as myself, so I am on a low budget. So I am thinking in the 100 bucks tops range for this work. (You can post to Jim Thompson on this formum if you have any question about me honoring my word on this kind of stuff.)
I know this kind of work done by a pro or for that matter anyone with the skills is worth more the 100 bucks so I in no way mean to demean the work, but on the other hand if there is a student, hobbyist, retired engineer with some time on their hands and would like to pick up a $100 or so, then this is addressed to you.
I recently had a very successful adventure here getting help in designing a relay control board for my Alarm system (actually one member Jim Thompson designed the circuit, I just provided the specs and requirements). This went from concept to working in 10 days, so I do work fast with whoever is helping me, but at these prices will of course work at the pace you set.
After I had a schematic, I ordered the parts, and built it on my breadboard and it works perfectly, been smoke testing it for days now and in a week or so of burn-in testing I want to finish this project and take it off the breadboard and build it.
My initial plan and what may be the result depending on the replies to this message was to just put it on a perf board and wire it together, I have done this plenty of times. Then two things came to mind, one was it would be nice to have this on a real PCB and the second is more of a "wish list" item, but one that is very attractive to me.
I looked at a couple of the free PCB Layout programs, like from PCB Express and saw that the software was not all that hard to use, but the hard part was knowing what to plug in for all the values, trace width, pad sizes, hole sizes and so on. I just need a couple of these boards, a main one and a spare, and don't do enough projects of this nature to want to invest the time it would take to learn it all, nor make all of the newbie mistakes that come with anything like this.
One thing to note is I have links to all of the datasheets for the parts I used, I ordered them all from Digi-Key and can provide those links. The $100 buck range is have someone use one of those programs from a place that will make a couple of boards for no more than $100 bucks, I saw plenty of them as I looked around at this. So 100 for the PBC layout guy (you), and 100 for the 2 boards. The next option, from my wish list is for someone willing to miniturize this, reduce as many parts to smd parts and make a really small footprint board (but not so small I can't solder the parts myself, I have soldered smd parts before.)
Wooow, long preamble...
Part 1. PCB Layout Work
I have the schematic and the data sheets for all of the parts (and parts list of course), but I have never used any of the PCB software out there to make a PCB I could send off and have built, so I am looking for someone take the schematic I have and the list of links to the data sheets on the parts and do the work in a form that a board maker in my price range will accept (ie. passes their requirements to make one.)
Part 2. Make it all a LOT smaller... In this case I would provide the schematic, parts lists, and datasheet links and someone would figure out the the smallest reasonable parts and produce a parts list (including where I can get them from), and also design the PCB I would need made, same as Part 1. We could negotiate a fee for this extra work, but keep in mind it would be nominal like the origial fee I am offering.
So if there are any takers, please either respond here or you can email me at snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com.
Schematic Link:
Links to pictures of it on my bread board:
Link to "Big Picture" what I am getting done:
I know have everything in that pig picture link except a PCB to build the relay circuit on, the reason I am interested in a small version is that when I first posted this idea I was thinking it would be a few parts and I could easily get them in the case of the alarm control, but at this size, I will have to put it in an external box, not the end of the world, but fitting inside would be cool.
Finally, just so you know what all this does, is that I wanted a way to turn on my X-10 Camera's when I Arm my X-10 DS-7000 Alarm System and then turn the Camera's off when I disarm the system.
Thanks for your time! WildBill